The Birth of the Baseball Hall of Fame: Legends, Myths, and Cooperstown’s Historic Opening

Picture this. A small town in New York gets transformed overnightth and becomes a heartbeat of America's pastime and really sets up how we celebrate sports and the people that participate. On June nineteen thirty nine, Cooperstown, New York, was officially dedicated as the Baseball Hall of Fame, the first of its kind that would include legend origins, highly debated elections, and enshrined sports that fans can forever visit. Hey, we're going to dive into how the Baseball Hall of Fame started and how it's grown to be what it is today on Daily Sports History. Let's us go. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide as you daily learn more about sports history, increasing your sports knowledge as we dive into Cooperstown. For us to dive into the Hall of Fame, we got to go behind the visionary and that was Stephen Clark, who was born in Cooperstown in the late eighteen hundreds to a wealthy family and was the heir to the singer sewing machine fortune. Right, guys, you wouldn't think that a sewing machine fortune would lead to the Hall of Fame, but he would go on to graduate from Yale and attend Columbia Law School and have a lot of interest in art and business, become a publisher, and he had a lot of civic pride for his hometown Cooperstown. He helped build one of the major hotels in town, supported the hospital, funded museums, and by the nineteen thirties Cooperstown was a picturesque little place. But the economy was stagnant in the village and Clark was seeking a way to revolutionize his hometown. And he saw an opportunity when he discovered that the legend of alber Doubleday, who quote invented baseball that's for another story, was from his town. So Clark proposed to have a museum of Hall of Fame to celebrate baseball, and the aim was to boost tourism to his town and honor America's pastime. He personally funded the construction of the building and leveraged his wealth and influence to make the project a reality. But his vision went beyond just a museum. It was a living monument to what would enshrine the game's greatest players and contributors for future generations, and his idea grew a lot of support, and he gained traction with the baseball leadership and the Baseball Writers Association of America who would become the voters for who would be enshrined in the Hall of Fame. And the plan was to hold a national election to select the first inductees in ensuring the legitimacy and the excitement of the Hall of Fame and would drive tourism and money to his town that he loved. So in nineteen thirty six they held the very first election for the Hall of Fame. Now this was probably the hardest vote ever for the Hall of Fame because you had everyone that had played baseball for the first sixty years of professional baseball, and voters could select up to ten candidates of the modern area from nineteen hundred on to be inducted, and to be inducted, they need to be on seventy five percent of the ballots, and they. Were able to get a very good first class. Ty Cobb got the most votes with ninety eight two hundred and twenty two. Votes, followed by Babe, Ruth. Hornece Wagner, Christy Matthews, and Walter Johnson. Now this was a surprise, many thought Babe Ruth would be the outright getter, but Ty Cobb got the most votes and gave an unsurprisingly good publicity to the Hall of Fame. It created a discussion about it, a debate who should get in who should not, and that's something that's still so. In the next class, they added in Nap Joey, Tris Speaker, and the legend Ty Young, along with managers Connie Mack, John McGraw and league founders Morgan Bunkly and Byron Johnson. The next year they focused more on the pioneers, so they've led in Alex Cartwright who developed early rules, Henry Chadowick, who was the inventor of the box score in Pitcher, Grover Cleveland, Alexander and the next year is probably one of the biggest years for them to add into it. They added Edit Collison, Willie Keller, George Sisler, and Louke Garrick, whose career had ended early due to his als diagnosis. So the threshold to get into this was everyone that voted would vote on who they wanted to be in the Hall, and you had to get at least seventy five percent of the votes. If you didn't get it, you didn't get in, but you can be on the ballot for next year, and it would go on that way for years and years. So these were the first three. Inducting classes into the Hall of Fame, and on June twelfth, nineteen thirty nine, they actually open and dedicated Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame. It was a historic day. Fifteen thousand fans joined, baseball legends were there, dignitaries were there, all gathered to dedicate the National Baseball Hall of Fame and museum, and the streets were decorated with flags. It was a huge day for Cooperstown, exactly what Stephen Clark wanted, and they had their very first induction ceremony right in front of the new museum on Main Street. Eleven of the twenty five living inductees were there, including babru Ty Cobb, Hornis Wagner, and Walter Johnson. And baseball leaders such as the Commissioner of the League, the president of the National League, and the American League President was there presiding over the ribbon cutting in the official opening of the hall to the public. After the induction, of course, they had a parade of players fans moved to a field they had put it in the city called Double Day Field for a special game. And this game was an exhibition game and it featured thirty two major league stars, two from each of the sixteen teams divided into teams chosen by Hornis Wagner and Eddie Collins, and the game was a highlight, featuring players such as Dizzy Bean, Lefty Grove, and even Babe Ruth pinched hit. But Wagner's team did win four to two, and I wish they actually played this game today. Can you imagine all these old players coming back to play a game against each other. It would be fantastic. I would love to see that. But the real victory was for the Hall of Fame itself. So since they opened the Hall of Fame, it has continued to grow from a single gallery that it started out as into a sixty thousand square foot state of the art museum visited by over seventeen million visitors across the world, and it has expanded to not only have players, but managers, umpires, executives, pioneers, and even include players that weren't in Major League Baseball as the Negro League. In nineteen sixty two, Jackie Robinson became the first African American inducted into the Hall of Fame, breaking down another color barrier, And in nineteen seventy one they inducted their first Negro League player, and in two thousand and six they actually added seventeen more Negro League figures to help show how vital this was to the game of the sport. Women and international players have been honored, and they're reaching out to everyone that has helped baseball at some point in their life. And the voting has actually evolved over time. They still maintained that seventy five percent threshold, but candidates must have ten years a major league experience before retiring and be retired for five years before they are able to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. And there are special committees inducting other types of people that were overlooked or in various other parts of baseball. And they've adopted the motto of preserving history, honoring excellence, and connecting generations. And every year they have the annual ceremony held every sum and remains a major event, drawing fans, drawing multiple fans, and as of twenty twenty four, they have inducted three hundred and forty six individuals, which is two hundred and seventy four players, thirty nine executives and pioneers, twenty three managers in ten umpires. But that doesn't mean they have luck every year because they have the threshold they have. There have been nine years where no player was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Started in nineteen forty five and it last happened in twenty twenty one. And the Hall of Fame has done a lot of different things as well. They have banned players, most notably Pete Rose, who after his death have removed the band and he will be allowed to be inducted if voted in. This is controversy, and they also have the controversy over the steroids era. And steroids era was a black eye on baseball and many players who have been thought to be using them or have tested positive have been blackballed by the Writers of America. They're not officially banned, but they're kind of black ball They're not getting that percentage that normally you would get from some of these great players, such as Barry Bonds or Mark maguire, who would be surefire Hall of Famers if not for the steroids allegations. But that's the discussion that the Baseball Hall of Fame keeps being in. Every year we talk about the Hall of Fame, we talk about who should be in the Hall of Fame, who should not, Whether steroids were just a part of the game and they should be in. The question is do you just let the best players in no matter what, or do they have to have a moral code. That's up for the Hall of Fame to decide. I want to thank you for listening to Today's Daily Sports History. If you like this, please make sure you like and subscribe wherever you're at. That way, you don't miss a single episode. We'll see you on the next one.